Tsagualsa turned in the void before them: grey, bare, granted only the thinnest cloud cover over its visible hemisphere.
Corswain and Alajos stood away from their lord, watching the world themselves. ‘Permission to speak freely, my liege.’
The Lion nodded, not taking his eyes from the oculus. ‘Granted, Cor.’
‘The enemy has summoned us to a purgatorial shithole.’
The Lion’s lips curled. To the humans nearby, it was a cold sneer. To his warriors, it was the ghost of amusement. ‘I will be sure to include that in the rolls of honour for this campaign. Auspex?’
An officer by the auspex station conferred with the three robed servitors hardwired to the console. He called over to the Lion a moment later. ‘The planet reads as lifeless, my lord – a thin atmosphere, tolerable but devoid of any mass life trace. The soil appears to be faintly irradiated, a natural phenomenon. A fleet with Legiones Astartes code returns is stationed in high geocentric orbit on the planet’s sunless side.’
‘Such literal creatures,’ the Lion growled. ‘Fleet size? Disposition?’
‘Counting for long-range auspex unreliability and warp echoes, it looks like seven vessels. One cruiser and six support ships, all in abeyance of standard formation protocols.’
The Lion rested his hand on the pommel of his sheathed blade. ‘When our support translates in-system, hold a loose formation on approach. Master of vox-officers, when we are in range, hail the enemy cruiser.’
The Angel fleet, modest as it was, arrived piecemeal over the course of the next three hours. When the final destroyer, Seventh Son, drifted into formation with the gathered ships, the Vehemence powered up its engines and guided the flotilla closer to the dead world.
‘We’re already being hailed,’ the master of vox-operators called out. ‘Audio only.’
The Lion inclined his head at the man. A moment later, a soft voice breathed over the bridge speakers, flawed by vox-crackle.
‘Well, well, well. Look what stumbled into our system.’
‘I know that voice.’ The Lion’s tone was ice itself. ‘Cease your barking, dog, and tell me where I will find the master that holds your leash.’
‘Is that any way to greet a beloved nephew?’ The soft voice broke away into short chuckle. ‘My master makes ready to walk the surface of the world below, for he expects you to meet with him. To prove our good intentions, our fleet will move out of orbit, beyond the range necessary to fire on the surface. Meanwhile, scan the world yourself. In the northern reaches of the largest western continental plate, you will find the foundations of a fortress. My primarch will meet you there.’
‘This still reeks of an ambush,’ Alajos warned.
The Lion didn’t reply. Instead, he answered the vox-voice. ‘What is to stop me firing on those coordinates from orbit?’
‘By all means, do just that. Commit to whatever course of action it takes to ease your suspicions. When you have ceased panicking and firing into the shadows, please inform me. I will ask my lord to wait until then.’
‘Sevatar.’ Corswain had never heard the Lion pour so much threat into a single name.
‘Yes, uncle?’ the soft voice chuckled again.
‘Tell your master that I will meet him where he wishes. Inform him to limit his honour guard to two warriors, for I will be doing the same.’
The Lion drew a thumb across his throat, signalling the vox-channel’s termination. Those cold eyes turned upon his closest two sons, and he reached for his helm. ‘Alajos. Corswain. Come with me.’
V
He hated doing this.
‘Permission to speak freely, my liege.’
The Lion stood in full armour now, his features masked by the snarling helm with its angular crest of splayed angel wings. The helm’s slanted red eyes emanated disapproval even before the Lion’s rumbling baritone left the speaker-grille.
‘Not this time, Cor. Focus yourself.’ The sword at the Lion’s hip was as tall as a Legiones Astartes warrior in full war plate. The primarch’s left hand rested on its hilt, his posture somewhere between the piratical grace of a gunslinger and the cautious reverence of a knight preparing to pull steel.
Corswain kept his silence, bolter loosely clutched in his hands. The chamber around them was almost devoid of Gothic ornamentation, its ceiling and walls instead given over to the cabled, thudding engineering of Mechanicum teleportation generators. Several of the rattling engine pods vented near-continuous gushes of steam for no reason Corswain could comprehend.
‘Begin,’ the Lion ordered. At the chamber’s edges, cowled tech-menials cranked levers and manned great bronze wheels, turning them on squealing mechanisms. As they worked, each one chanted a different numerical line of a binary cant, like some bizarre mathematical sea shanty.
The engines started to judder, whining as they cycled up to engage. On a raised platform above the flat chamber deck, a choir of nine robed astropaths sang with closed eyes. Their Gregorian chants were at eerie odds with the blurted coding issued forth from the menials.
Corswain truly loathed travelling like this. Seat him down in the deployment bay of a Stormbird gunship screaming through low atmosphere and into the face of enemy fire rising up from the ground, and he wouldn’t think twice. Buckle him into a drop-pod and spit him from the bowels of an orbiting ship to plough into the soil several kilometres below, and he’d do his duty without a whisper of complaint.
But telepor–
VI
–tation was something else.
Even before the flash of white-gold faded, he felt the world’s wind pushing against his armour with weak breaths, strong enough to do no more than tear at his surplice and the oath scroll bound to his shoulder guard. His bolter was up and ready in the seconds it took for his vision to clear of the chemical-scented mist from their teleportation. Artificial thunder from displaced air echoed in his ears, filtered to tolerable levels by his helm’s autosenses.
The aura of coiling mist would’ve lingered longer but for the breeze. Corswain took a moment to feel the hard earth beneath his boots, to assure himself that he was whole and complete. With teeth gritted and skin crawling, he panned his bolter across the vista before him.
Dusty wind gritted against his visor as his gunsight followed the horizon. They’d materialised in the heart of a crater, spanning at least a kilometre across in all directions. Black stone foundations jutted from the ground – too new to be ruins, they were low walls and pillars that would form the basis of a huge building above. The Night Lords were building something here. A fortress... but the work crews had evidently been withdrawn to make way for this meeting.
Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
‘Clear,’ he called, in the same moment Alajos called the same.
The Lion moved to one of the black rock pillars, stroking a gauntleted hand down its sculpted side. Corswain doubted it escaped the primarch’s notice that the stone was clearly quarried off-world and brought here for use.
‘Do you hear something?’ he asked.
Alajos turned to the primarch. ‘The wind, my liege.’
Corswain didn’t answer at first. Could he hear something beneath the wind clawing at his helm’s receptors? Something beyond his own slow breathing and the machine-beat of his pulse tracker at the left edge of his retinal display? With a blink-click, he disabled his active retinal screen.
The world’s breath howled on.
‘Just the wind, sire.’
‘Very well,’ the Lion replied. ‘Now we wait.’
VII
On the strike of the third minute, a second sonic boom of displaced air heralded the enemy’s arrival. Corswain looked into the nexus of spreading mist as the ship’s atmosphere teleported down with the enemy dissipated into the wind. His lenses didn’t filter out the light fast enough, and in the wake of the transition flare, Corswain had t
o blink to clear his aching eyes. Tears came unbidden, not from pain or torment, but as the biological response to soothe the irritation.
The Lion anticipated his movements, for he said ‘Weapons down, little brothers,’ as soon as the knight felt his muscles bunch.
‘Yes, my liege,’ Alajos murmured, displeasure raw in his tone.
Corswain swallowed his awe at what stood before him. A cadaverous god, in midnight clad, each armoured finger ending in a charged blade the length of a scythe. Black hair at the mercy of the world’s winds streamed back from a corpse’s face. Chained skulls rattled against war plate etched with runic writing rejoicing in past massacres and celebrating atrocity against the empire of humanity. This husk of nobility, this emaciated wraith now no more than the shadow of a prince, bared teeth filed to fangs as he opened his arms to the Lion, offering a welcoming embrace.
‘My brother,’ hissed Konrad Curze, Lord of the VIII Legion. His was a viper’s smile, just as predatory, just as brazen in its hunger. ‘I have missed you.’
The Lion hesitated. He raised his hands to his collar, unlocking the helm’s seals hidden there, and pulled the helmet free. An expression of naked surprise marked his features, yet his face was still an angel’s countenance – not the beatific, handsome lies of ancient religious myth, but rather the truth of Terran artistry: a face that could’ve been shaped from tanned marble, emerald eyes with soulful depths, contrasted by a mouth that would forever struggle to show emotion.
To Corswain’s eyes, Curze was pathetic, ghoulish, in comparison. A wretched husk facing a knight-lord, claws against a prince’s sword.
‘Curze?’ The Lion asked, his resonant voice softened by disbelief. ‘What has happened to you?’
The Night Lord ignored the question, speaking with insincerity rich enough to make Corswain’s teeth ache. ‘Thank you for coming. How it warms my heart to see you.’
The Lion drew his blade in a slow, clean movement. He neither brought it en garde, nor threatened the other primarch. Instead, he clutched it in both black gauntlets, the crosspiece hilt before his face as he stared at Curze above the quillions.
‘I will ask you this once and once only: Why did you betray our father?’
‘I would ask you something in return, brother,’ Curze answered with a grin, his filed teeth on display. The clawed primarch’s eyes were unhealthily bright, rich with a secret sickness. ‘Why did you not?’
The Lion lowered his blade to end the salute, knightly respects now paid. ‘Our father has charged me to take your head back to Terra.’
‘Our father said nothing, for he hides within his dungeons, collecting the secrets of the universe and sharing them with no one. Lorgar and Magnus have seen everything our father sought to hide, so do not carry a precious little lie as your shield, Lion. You are Dorn’s hound, running here to the Eastern Fringe because he ordered you.’ Curze licked his filed teeth. ‘Come, brother. Let us at least do one another the service of being honest. I know Dorn.’ Here, the Night Lord gave his cadaverous smile again. ‘He sent you to do that which he feared to try himself.’
‘I did not come to duel with words, Konrad. I came to end this crusade.’
The Night Lord shook his head, his pallid face grey in the weak moonlight. His lips were the only colour on his visage, and even they were a bloodless blue. ‘Speak with me, brother. Listen, reply in kind, and then decide if we must continue this war.’
‘You will not sway me with your traitor’s tongue.’
Curze nodded, utterly unsurprised. His vile facade cracked for a moment, revealing the warrior he’d once been – perhaps never pure, never free of torment, but capable of emotion beyond this condescending bitterness. The strain lines of pain faded from his brow, and the serpent’s sneer left his lips. His voice was still raw, still ruined, but now carried an edge of sorrow. ‘I know. So what harm is there in speaking together, this one last time?’
The Lion nodded. ‘Wait here,’ he ordered his sons. ‘I will return soon.’
VIII
The two Night Lords had no need to introduce themselves, for their identities were known throughout the million-strong ranks of the Legiones Astartes. Both wore helms with painted-skull faceplates; both bore armour trophies of oversized skulls and Dark Angel helms hanging from their war plate on bronze chains; and both stood at ease, watching the warriors from the First Legion through red eye lenses. One of them leaned on the haft of a long halberd, a weapon he was renowned for. The other held a bolter at rest, a cloak of black weave draped over one shoulder and down his back.
‘You look familiar,’ the first warrior spoke. He nodded his head towards Alajos. ‘We met at Kruun, did we not?’
Alajos’s voice barely rose above a growl. ‘Aye. We did.’
‘Yes, I recall the moment now.’ The Night Lord chuckled whisper-soft, and mimed a two-handed chop with his halberd. The deactivated chainblade atop the spear’s haft was over a metre long, grinning with its stilled teeth. ‘I’m surprised you survived, Angel. It was careless of me to allow that. How is the face?’
Corswain moved to rest his hand on his brother’s bolter. He spoke over their helm-vox, so the Night Lords wouldn’t hear. ‘Be calm, captain. Don’t let him wound you with childish words.’
Alajos nodded. He spoke as Corswain moved away. ‘It has healed well. Your flawed carving did sting for several minutes afterwards, though.’
‘That’s good news. It is wise of you to wear the helm this time, cousin. The last time I saw your face, most of it was a wet ribbon of flayed flesh stuck to the ground by my feet. My brothers in the First Company enjoy the tale, for it was the first time I’ve ever started to skin an Angel while he was still alive.’
Alajos grunted in reply, his hands fairly twitching with the need to raise his bolter and open fire. ‘I will kill you, Sevatar. On my life, I swear it.’
‘Cousin, cousin, cousin... I outrank you, do I not? That’s First Captain Sevatar to you, little Angel.’
‘Peace,’ Corswain voxed. ‘Peace, brother. Vengeance will come, and be all the sweeter for this moment.’
This time, the cloaked warrior spoke. ‘You. Angel in the fur. Do you know me?’
Corswain turned to them both. He felt the wind pick up, ruffling the white fur cloak around his shoulders. ‘Yes, Sheng. I know you.’
‘The skinned animal you wear as a trophy. I’ve never seen such a thing. What manner of creature is that?’
Corswain grinned. ‘It’s the beast that never dies in my dreams.’
‘Is that some crude Calibanite poetry? We had few poets on our home world, but their works would have made you weep. Our tongue lends itself to melodic prose very gracefully.’
‘Nath sihll shah, vor’vorran kalshiel,’ Corswain said, in fluent Nostraman. Sheng and Sevatar shared another laugh.
‘Your accent is brutal,’ Sevatar admitted, ‘but that was nicely done. It will be a shame to kill you both when the time comes. You have my oath here, on VIII Legion soil, that we will make trophies from your helms. You deserve nothing less.’
‘How comforting,’ Corswain chuckled with them. ‘I have a question of my own.’
Sevatar performed a mocking little bow. ‘We are at your service, cousins.’
‘Your gauntlets,’ Corswain said, and left it at that.
Sevatar held up his free hand, as he continued to lean on the halberd with the other. The gauntlet was at odds with his midnight armour – where the war plate was deep, dark blue and marked by streaks of lightning, his gauntlets were painted arterial red.
‘A mark of shame in our Legion,’ the Night Lord’s voice still betrayed more amusement than regret. ‘A warrior’s gauntlets are marked this way when he has failed the primarch gravely enough to warrant death. He will wear the stain of failure on his hands until his execution, at the hour of the primarch’s choosing.’
Corswain wa
tched the enemy captain through the filter of retinal target locks. ‘A curious custom.’
‘Perhaps. But so is hiding your armour beneath cloth robes.’
Corswain felt himself grinning again. ‘A knightly tradition from our home world.’
Sevatar nodded. ‘This is a gang tradition from ours. The hands of traitors and fools were tattooed red by their families to show them as deathmarked. A sign that no gang or family would tolerate grave failure, but that the condemned still had labours to perform before they were allowed to die.’
‘So which are you, a traitor or a fool?’
The Night Lord’s voice revealed his own smile, even if his soulless helm did not. ‘Both.’
Alajos was losing his patience. ‘Why do you revel with these wretches, brother? And what did you say in their snake-tongue?’
‘I told them that I knew they mated with pigs.’
‘Madness. Do they have no honour? Why would they laugh at such an insult?’
‘Because they are not knights. They possess honour of a kind, it is simply different to ours.’
‘Perhaps you should spend less time in the archives learning the tongues and traditions of murderers.’ Alajos’s tone carried more than a hint of reprimand. It was almost an accusation.
‘And what of “knowing one’s enemy”? Balance your humours, I am on your side, remember.’ Corswain turned to the west as the primarchs stalked back, moving slowly, still speaking in low voices. ‘The Lion returns. Be ready.’
Alajos grunted again, his mood too sour to bother with words.
IX
The warriors fell silent as their lords returned – still distant, but close enough to be heard. The Lion acknowledged his warriors with a curt nod. They responded with salutes, forming the sign of the aquila over their tabards. Curze ignored his sons, still addressing his brother.
Age of Darkness Page 33
